Leopold Aschenbrenner
Situational Awareness
Profile & Investment Philosophy
Leopold Aschenbrenner is the German-American former OpenAI Superalignment researcher whose Situational Awareness LP scaled from roughly $225 million at its 2024 launch to more than $20 billion on a single AGI thesis. Q2 2026 was his most dramatic turn yet: the entire put wall is gone. Bets against Nvidia, Oracle, Broadcom, AMD and the semiconductor ETF - more than $7 billion of puts a quarter earlier - were closed, and the money went long memory. SanDisk (+119%) and Micron now make up 56% of a $20.2 billion book, joined by new stakes in Nebius and STMicroelectronics.
Track Record
Aschenbrenner graduated as valedictorian from Columbia University at 19, worked at Oxford-linked research institutes, then joined OpenAI's Superalignment team in 2023 before his dismissal in April 2024 amid disputes over safety and security. His 165-page essay “Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead” argued that AGI could arrive by 2027. He launched Situational Awareness LP that same year with anchor capital from Stripe's Patrick and John Collison, Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman. The fund reportedly returned 47% after fees in the first half of 2025, surged again in 2026, and later attracted trading giant Jane Street as an investor.
Signature Trades
Current Strategy (2026)
Aschenbrenner's Q2 2026 13F ends the barbell. The entire put wall — more than $7 billion of options against Nvidia, Oracle, Broadcom, AMD, Micron and the VanEck semiconductor ETF — was closed, and the proceeds went long the memory bottleneck. SanDisk (+119%) and Micron now account for 56% of a $20.2 billion book of just 26 positions, followed by Bloom Energy, Taiwan Semiconductor and new stakes in Nebius and STMicroelectronics. The "picks and shovels" of compute remain: CoreWeave, Core Scientific, Applied Digital, Riot and IREN. What changed is the second leg: instead of shorting the most crowded semiconductor valuations, the fund now expresses the AGI thesis almost entirely long, concentrated in the components that constrain how fast compute can be built.
BMI Counter-Take
Aschenbrenner's rise is extraordinary — and so is the concentration risk. Running more than $20 billion before turning 30 on a single macro thesis, with the majority of his reported 13F value tied up in put options, is a timing bet as much as a research call: options decay, and a melt-up in the very chip names he is short could hurt quickly. The long book is logical — power and compute are genuine bottlenecks — yet richly valued in its own right. We respect the conviction and the SEC-documented record, but we treat a portfolio this skewed, this young and this dependent on AGI arriving on schedule as a high-variance bet, not a blueprint to copy.
Current Portfolio
LATEST 13F 2026-06-30Latest SEC Form 13F filing. Total portfolio value: $20.2 B. Holdings: 26 positions.
| Security | Shares | Δ vs Prev | Value ($) | Portfolio % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sandisk Corp. | 2.50 M | +118.9% | $5.67 B | 28.0 % |
| Micron Technology Inc. | 4.83 M | +27712.4% | $5.57 B | 27.5 % |
| Bloom Energy Corp. | 6.27 M | -3.3% | $1.90 B | 9.38 % |
| Taiwan Semiconductor Manufac | 2.65 M | +11713.9% | $1.27 B | 6.25 % |
| Nebius Group N.v. | 4.46 M | ★ NEW | $1.23 B | 6.09 % |
| Coreweave Inc. | 7.48 M | +4.2% | $745 M | 3.68 % |
| Core Scientific Inc. New | 26.0 M | — | $666 M | 3.29 % |
| Stmicroelectronics | 7.80 M | ★ NEW | $584 M | 2.89 % |
| Applied Digital Corp. | 15.4 M | +14.1% | $469 M | 2.32 % |
| Riot Platforms Inc. | 17.1 M | +48.7% | $468 M | 2.31 % |
SOURCE: SEC Form 13F (2026-08-14). BMI Smart Money Tracker.